Global warming: it's all about the money.

Life used to be so much simpler in the old days, but then everything changed.  A key date is 15 June 1989, on which day the Green Party polled more than two million votes in the European Parliament elections.  This was widely interpreted as the British electorate indicating that they wanted the major parties to focus more on environmental issues.

The two major issues which were gaining a lot of attention at the time were global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer, and those issues are still with us today, except that there is now a high level of public scepticism – especially where global warming is concerned.

Many years ago I was discussing this topic with a man who was very much into the green scaremongering.  I mentioned to him that I had read an essay in a magazine which argued that the scaremongering was not based on good science.  If I remember rightly, it observed among other things that the hole in the ozone layer was merely seasonal.

I was then taken aback when the man retorted to the effect that big business would want to hide the truth.  He did not enlarge on that, probably because there was very little substance in what he was saying.

I concede that any company which is in the business of making money may be tempted to conceal the truth on occasions, but it is also fair to say that businesses can often make money out of environmental scaremongering.  Before 15 June 1989, the only way to sell washing powder was to argue that it cleaned your clothes.  Afterwards you could also argue that it contained fewer chemicals, and so was less harmful to the environment – and I can recall at least one television commercial which took that exact line.

Suppose you run a company which manufactures wind turbines.  Generally speaking, wind turbines are ugly and useless, and the only reason they are prolific is because they attract generous subsidies.  These subsidies are justified by environmental scaremongering, and so your company’s fortunes depend heavily upon the acceptance of the scare stories – even if they are completely untrue.

Suppose also that you are the director of an environmental lobby organisation.  Your income derives largely from membership dues paid by ordinary members of the public.  It is therefore vital that at least some people believe the latest environmental scare stories, because otherwise your organisation would probably have to close owing to a lack of money.

Global warming has kept many people on the gravy train, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon.

Some readers may accuse me of overlooking the compelling scientific evidence, and yes I’m sure the evidence is compelling to anyone whose place on the gravy train depends on us believing in scare stories.

Related previous posts include:

BBC bias: criminal law and global warming

Religion and science education

A national newspaper recently reported an academic study into religion and science.  The study was a collaborative effort by psychologists at two universities, one in Britain and one in the USA, and it concluded that countries which tend to be strongly religious tend not to perform well in the teaching of mathematics and science at school.

I am aware that newspaper reports are often misleading, and so I recently took the time to speak with one of the academics involved in the study to find out more.

First, it appears that the authors of the report relied in part on a survey of attitudes to religion which they themselves did not compile.  This survey ranks eighty-two countries as to how strongly religious people in those countries tend to be.  Of the twelve deemed most religious, only two are predominantly Christian countries, with the other ten being Muslim countries.  Of the twelve deemed the least religious, almost all are predominantly Christian countries.

The authors discuss a displacement hypothesis, whereby school pupils spend time learning about religion instead of learning about science and mathematics.  Obviously this hypothesis applies equally to other subjects.  Time spent studying a foreign language is time not spent studying science or mathematics.

Also, time alone is no guarantee of quality.  Half an hour spent in a classroom with a good teacher is surely more valuable than an hour spent in a classroom with an inadequate teacher.

In other words, this academic study appears to be so vague in its findings as to be of very little value.  If the authors would like to carry out further research, then maybe they could give us some more significant insights, but I see little reason to respond enthusiastically to a study which apparently treats all religions the same.  They are not all the same.

An academic view of races

I cannot resist the temptation to return to the issue of race.  I am responding to an essay I recently found on the internet.  The quotes are in blue text, and I respond in black text.

The worst error in the history of science was undoubtedly classifying humans into the different races.

Rather than stray into a lengthy digression, I will merely observe that there are many errors in the history of science which could be classified as the worst.  Also, the fact that the author uses the term the different races suggests to me that he secretly accepts that races do in fact exist.

... race theory ... has wreaked untold misery and been used to justify barbaric acts of colonialism, slavery and even genocide. Even today it's still used to explain social inequality, and continues to inspire the rise of the far right across the globe.

Was race theory used to justify the millions of murders committed by the armed forces of the United Kingdom and the USA over the past hundred years or so?  I merely ask.

The human races were invented by anthropologists like Johann Friedrich Blumenbach back in the 18th century ...

This is utter garbage.  Anthropologists may have identified the concept of races, but races themselves were never invented.  They exist as a fact of science.

As an aside, I have recently found out that the word race derives from the medieval Italian word razza, and that it can be used to mean a breeding stock of animals.  The different races we see in the world today are basically different breeding stocks.  They have tended in the past to be determined largely be geography, but even in present day multiracial societies they can be determined by culture.  For example, fewer than ten percent of marriages in Britain today are inter-racial.

From the very beginning, the arbitrary and subjective nature of categories was widely acknowledged.

This is misleading.  It may well be true that there are some situations where racial definitions become blurred, but there are also many situations where the classification of animals into species and subspecies become blurred.  Does it follow that scientists who indulge in such classification are charlatans?

Most of the time races were justified on the grounds of cultural or language differences between groups of people rather than biological ones.

Even if this is true, it proves nothing.

Their existence was taken as a given right up until the 20th century when anthropologists were busy writing about races as a biological explanation for differences in psychology, including intelligence, and educational and socioeconomic outcomes between groups of people.

While the author does not want us to believe in races, he nevertheless acknowledges that there are different groups of people, and that they can differ in terms of intelligence and socioeconomic outcomes.  Maybe he’ll be telling us next that they can also differ in terms of propensity to criminal acts.

But buried within the survey results were some troubling findings like that anthropologists from privileged groups — in the US context 'white' males and females — were more likely to accept race as valid than non-privileged groups.

The author now accepts that white people exist as a group, and also as a privileged group.  Notice also that he does not explain what he means by privilege in this context.

These privileged scientists represent 75 per cent of the anthropologists surveyed. Their power and influence reaches right across the field. They are the main people determining what research is done, who gets funding ...

The author appears to hint at the possibility that access to funding in the academic world may not always be decided strictly on the basis of merit, but rather on the basis of adherence to an accepted point of view.  That does not surprise me in the slightest.

Related previous posts include:
Is there really just one race?
Are you a racist?

Honesty and drug use: two scientific studies

Newspapers are not always truthful, but sometimes it is hard to fathom why.  A columnist whose work I often admire recently wrote about an academic study into honesty which apparently found that people in European countries tend to be more honest than people in Africa or Asia.

The study did not link the findings with race but with the level of government corruption in different countries, and it is not surprising that a British newspaper should be happy to report that race is not the issue.

What is harder to comprehend is that the columnist completely misrepresented the nature of the study.  It appears that young people in various countries were invited to roll a die twice in secret and then report the score on their first roll.  People who reported a high score were rewarded with money, and so there was an obvious incentive to lie.

The columnist reported that participants had been secretly filmed, and so the people carrying out the study knew which participants were telling the truth.  The curious thing is that this was not true.  I say curious for two reasons.  The first is that there was no obvious reason for the columnist to misrepresent this fact.  The second is that it arguably undermines the entire study.  How can we argue that one group of people are more honest than another when we don't actually know whether or not any of them were lying?

At least one national newspaper today is reporting a study into the effects of prolonged cannabis use, which apparently include an increased tendency to financial problems and to antisocial behaviour.  The comments however are not favourable.  Many of the most highly rated comments refer to people who smoke cannabis and who have  successful careers.  I imagine that there may be a lot of truth in that.

One comment that is worth repeating is that because cannabis use is illegal, a lot of professional people who smoke cannabis would be unwilling to admit it publicly.  That alone might skew the results of any scientific study into cannabis use.

Most of us have met people who live to a great age and enjoy fairly good health despite leading an unhealthy lifestyle.  Likewise, it is perhaps unsurprising that there should be people out there who take illegal drugs without any obvious bad effects.

In other news, Kathryn Smith and her boyfriend Matthew Rigby are on trial for the murder of their young child Ayeeshia Jane Smith, who may have died after accidentally consuming cannabis.  Meanwhile, cannabis user Clayton Smith begins his sentence for the manlaughter of PC Dave Phillips.

What exactly is denialism?

While doing some research last year, I came across the word denialism.  The author - an Australian academic - did not explain what the word meant, but he was clearly using it in respect of defending his own point of view.

In a previous post on this blog, I presented the reader with a word which I had just invented: mortocracy.  Nevertheless, I was careful in that post to specify what the word means.

By contrast, communists often resort to using words which they have not taken the time to define properly.  My starting point when writing this blog post was to decide whether or not the word denialism is a useful word in academic debate or just another example of communist weasel speak.

In some of my previous posts I have used the Merriam-Webster online dictionary as a source, but at the time of writing it carries no definition for the word denialism.  I merely observe that fact.

I am unwilling to refer to Wikipedia as a source because I believe that the content of Wikipedia pages can be altered by almost anyone at any time.  At the time of writing, the lengthy Wikipedia entry on denialism can perhaps be summed up as defining denialism as the refutation of the consensus view in a given academic debate, whether in the field of science or history.  It appears also that denialism is invariably a negative thing.  There is no hint that challenging the consensus is ever a good thing.

The Skeptical Science website lists five characteristics of denialism: conspiracy theories, fake experts, cherry picking, impossible expectations, and misrepresentation and the use of logical fallacies.  So far as I can make out, the site does not offer any instances of where it is accepable to question the consensus point of view.


With regard to the first characteristic, I am apparently a denialist if I believe that people hold to a consensus point of view because they are part of a conspiracy.  But why should I not assume that?

One of the most famous hoaxes of all time was the discovery in 1912 of skull fragments which supposedly provided evidence for an early human being known as Piltdown Man.  It has been convincingly argued that at least some people in the early twentieth century knew it was a hoax, but were unwilling to say so.  In other words they were part of a conspiracy.

With regard to fake experts, no definition of a fake expert is offered.  Am I expected to believe that an expert who defies the consensus is a fake expert merely on the grounds of his defiance?

With regard to cherry picking, am I expected to believe that people who hold to a consensus point of view never indulge in the selective use of evidence?

With regard to impossible expectations, let me repeat what I said in an earlier post: it is debateable whether or not there is such a thing as proof in science.  Likewise, I remember the headmaster at my school - a historian - asserting that you cannot prove what happened on the way to school this morning.

With regard to misrepresentation and the use of logical fallacies, are we to assume that the consensus point of view is never founded on misrepresentation or the use of logical fallacies?  Also, even if I resort to deception in a bid to discredit the consensus point of view, then that in itself does not prove that the consensus view is robust.

Academic history is full of beliefs which were once well received but which have since been discredited.  The pseudoscience of phrenology is an example.

There are also many current beliefs which could be discredited at any point, and one obvious example is the belief that certain species are extinct.  I will give two examples.

A freshwater dolphin known as the baiji was declared functionally extinct in 2006.  The zoologists who reached this conclusion were not implying that no baiji were left alive, but that there were either no baiji left or at best not enough to provide an effective breeding population.  A baiji was sighted the following year, but this merely proved that the baiji was not extinct.  One baiji on its own does not provide a breeding population.

The Tasmanian Tiger is widely believed to have become extinct in the 1930s, but some people maintain that it still exists.  The difference between the Tasmanian Tiger and the baiji is that any confirmed sighting of a Tasmanian Tiger would allow us to conclude not only that it is not extinct, but also that it is also probably not functionally extinct either.  It is safe to say that any Tasmanian Tiger which was alive in the 1930s is now dead, and so the only way even one Tasmanian Tiger could be alive today would be if a breeding population remained active long after the 1930s.

I will add that a film clip from 1973 shows a creature which I firmly believe to be a Tasmanian Tiger.

In conclusion, the concept of denialism appears to be seriously flawed.  Unless someone can provide evidence to the contrary, I will continue to regard it as yet another example of how communists seek to distort or even suppress academic debate.

Related previous posts include:
What is mortocracy?
Fundamental issues in science